


a person in that situation is god

by Mellow_Yellow



Series: we are your sons, your husbands [1]
Category: Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: M/M, just breaking down all kinds of trope barriers, serial killer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-09 03:09:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11660373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellow_Yellow/pseuds/Mellow_Yellow
Summary: #no offense but why does favs look like a gentle FBI criminal psychologist and tommy looks like the serial killer who is in love with him #and toys with him #like no offense but why (via @baking-soda)fromthis poston tumblr





	1. Chapter 1

 

*

“Why did you do it?”

Tommy fixed him with that unnerving, unblinking stare of his. The fluorescent light of the interrogation room reflected oddly off his pale eyes. “What? What are you talking about?” 

“Why did you,” Jon asked hoarsely. “You had the window. It was right there. Why didn’t you just leave me behind?”

“The building was on fire, Jon,” Tommy said sensibly, like Jon had somehow forgotten. “You would’ve died in there. You were unconscious.”

Jon gritted his teeth. He didn’t need a reminder of how fucking careless he’d been, following a long-shot lead on a known murderer, last seen armed and dangerous, no backup, too eager at the chance to catch Vietor unawares to let Pfeiffer and Lovett and the rest of the team know where he was going. Showing up at the tumbledown warehouse all alone. Creeping silently through the building, the smell of kerosene growing stronger until he found Vietor in the back, dousing a pile of clothes and boxes and other detritus calmly. 

To his eternal shame, Jon didn’t see a hunk of brick lying on the ground and kicked it, like a goddamn idiot, the sound echoing painfully in the cavernous building.

Tommy had turned around, movement unhurried. Looked at Jon like he’d always expected him to be there.

“Agent Favreau,” he said. A corner of his mouth curled up, an odd juxtaposition with his otherwise flat affect. The empty kerosene can dangled loosely in his hand.

Jon was about fifty feet away from him. The floor between them was torn up from a long-abandoned construction effort, leaving a recessed crater in the floor, connected to the side where Tommy stood only by a scaffold catwalk. Jon hated heights, but he kept his eyes on Tommy. He saw a smudge of dirt on one of Tommy’s high, pale cheekbones. He saw Tommy’s mouth part and made himself look away.

“Stop what you’re doing and put your hands up, Vietor,” he called across the void. He kept his sidearm up, aimed carefully at Tommy’s chest, his breathing even. 

“You’ve got the worst fucking timing, I swear to god, Favs,” Tommy said with a chuckle, shaking his head. He didn’t sound mad. He seemed pleased to see Jon, if anything. Like it was a nice surprise. He dropped the kerosene and pulled out a lighter. 

“Don’t you fucking dare, Tommy!” Jon shouted, but it was too late.

Tommy flicked the lighter and tossed it at the opposite wall, flames igniting as soon as it connected, well on its way to destroying incalculable amounts of unspeakable evidence Tommy had stored here, his hidey-hole, painstakingly kept secret from Jon and the rest of the Feds until the very end.

Frustrated, Jon moved forward, opening his mouth to holler something, tell Tommy not to move probably. Maybe he could dart across the catwalk and grab him, at least get Tommy in custody and try to come back for the DNA evidence and everything else he’d stored here later with a fire suppression unit. 

But as he moved forward, his heel caught on something and he pitched forward, certain even as he stumbled that he was about to go careening into the blackness of the open space between them. 

He remembered Tommy’s voice, calling out, “Fuck, Jon, be  _careful_ —!” more urgent and alarmed than Jon had ever heard him before, over the years of cat-and-mouse, the endless phone calls and occasional toying messages left on Jon’s office voicemail. Tommy’s voice growing successively friendlier and more intimate over time. Enough that the team started to give Jon shit for it, and then enough for them to stop, spooked on his behalf. The object of a serial killer’s fixation. It was an unenviable position.

All Jon remembered after falling was the thunk his head made when it connected with the concrete, bouncing forward like a ragdoll, and then the jerk of being yanked out of space and pulled back into a strong pair of arms. Held steadily as the world went up in flames around them. 

For a second, even the air conditioned interrogation room felt overly hot as he remembered. Jon rubbed at his forehead, reminding himself where he was. What had happened. What hadn’t happened. He was alive, and Tommy was in custody, all because of the inexplicable whims of a monster.

“Why did you do it?” Jon needed to let it go, he knew that. But he also didn’t know the next time he’d get this much time with Tommy alone in the interrogation room, without another agent, psychologist, investigator—any number of professionals who would be itching at the chance to talk to Tommy Vietor, one of the most terrifying serial killers of a generation. 

“Why, Tommy?” he asked again. Urgent. He leaned forward, almost pleading.

Tommy blinked. For a moment, he seemed truly befuddled. He didn’t blink enough, in Jon’s opinion. It was one of the many unsettling things about his face. The way he stared. He couldn’t stop looking at Jon, it seemed. Like he was trying to drink in every detail of his face. Swallow it down, keep him forever.

“Because you didn’t deserve to die, Jon,” he said simply. Like that should be obvious.

Jon shook his head. “None of the people you killed deserved to die.”

Cocking his head a hair, Tommy looked almost fond. Like he found Jon sweet. “None of them were you.”

“So, what, I was somehow special enough for you to give everything up for?”

Because Tommy had given it all up, to save Jon. He’d carried him out of the warehouse, Jon mostly unconscious and already deeply concussed. They’d both been covered in smoke and ash, Tommy burned badly along one arm where he’d shoved through a flaming door to get out, Jon dangling from his arms in a clumsy bridal carry. He could have left Jon outside then, but he’d stayed with him, Jon was told. Stayed hovering over his body, hand on his chest as Jon drew shallow, hoarse breaths. Watching over him. Stayed there, even as the swat cars finally pulled up, Lovett having tracked Jon’s phone to the warehouse, and over a dozen federal agents hopped out and started shouting at him, guns raised.

“He didn’t even try to run,” Lovett had recounted later, mystified. “Just watched us with that creepy lizard face of his until we were close enough to get the cuffs on him. Didn’t fight back, just told us to take care of you.“ He’d laughed uncomfortably, and Jon had looked away. It was too much to contemplate.

Now, a week later, Jon was still dazed, too disoriented to puzzle too much about why. He couldn’t fathom why. That was why he had to ask, to know, directly from Tommy.

“Was it worth it?” he whispered harshly, the stitches on the back of his head where he’d hit the concrete throbbing.

Tommy was watching him patiently, eyes alert and intelligent and cold. “I would do anything for you, Jon. You know that.”

Jon heard himself gasp, a tiny sound but horrible nonetheless. He clapped a shaking hand over his mouth, mortified. He swallowed thickly, wholly unable to categorize what he was feeling. "Except for stop hurting people, I guess."

"Well, you never really asked me to do that, did you?" Tommy pointed out, gently.

"It was pretty fucking _implied_ , I think."

Tommy shrugged. "Never been great at cues. Sociopath, remember? Gotta spell it out."

Jon opened his mouth, then closed it sharply. He couldn't sit here bantering with Vietor, back and forth, the give-and-take easy. Exhaling through his nose, he brought his hand from his mouth to rub harder at his temple, the headache that had been threatening him all morning finally setting in. 

Tommy straightened in his seat, a slight furrow between his brows. “Does your head still hurt?” He raised his hand as though he was about to reach to touch Jon’s temple himself. The manacles securing his hands to the table stopped him. He looked at them ruefully, then up at Jon. “You should slow down. You need to take time to heal.” He shook his head chidingly. "You push yourself too hard.” 

Jon narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison,” he said. “Forever, probably.” He didn’t mean to sound so conflicted about it. It was a good thing, really. 

Slowly, Tommy smiled. His teeth were startling, so bright and straight. Jon figured he must’ve had braces as a kid.

“Forever is a long time, Jon,” Tommy said softly. Like he was sharing a secret. “A lot can change between now and then." 

Abruptly Jon got to his feet. He needed to get out this room. “Thanks,” he forced out. “For saving my life.” Why he felt compelled to thank a murderer for not letting him die, he’d never know. But as the words left his mouth, he felt lighter. Relieved. 

Tommy’s smile relaxed and slid off his face like it had never been there. His eyes still looked soft, though, as he looked at Jon. “Anytime, Agent Favreau.“ 

Jerkily, Jon nodded and turned on his heel. He pressed the bottom by the door, hands clenched at his side. He refused to look back.

As he waited at the door to be let out, he could feel the cold pair of eyes like a touch between his shoulder blades. He felt them on him until the security buzzer sounded and the door unlocked and he could leave. As he walked down the hall, his hands trembling minutely at his sides.

He refused to look back.

 *


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this, uh...took a turn. 
> 
> tw brief descriptions of violence (see end notes for more deets)

*

 

Amazingly, Jon had never visited someone in jail before.

He’d spent plenty of time interviewing people in prisons, psychiatric facilities. Endless hours in FBI holding cells, sitting across from suspects, trying to find a way in, getting a sense of how their minds worked. Somehow, though, he'd never been called in during this stage of the pretrial process. Normally his speciality was post-sentencing interviews, and field investigations. 

He usually wasn’t this nervous, either.

A guard opened the door ahead of him and held it propped so Jon could slip inside the small interrogation room. 

Tommy was already seated, waiting patiently for him. His hands were flat on the table, wrists shackled together, long fingers drumming out a rhythm on the surface. 

At the sound of the door, he twisted in his chair to look over his shoulder.

Jon stuttered to a stop. Frozen. Staring at Tommy, who looked almost the same even though it had been nearly five months since Jon had last seen him. He ws maybe a little paler and thinner. Still disarmingly young. 

There was no other word for it. His eyes lit up when he saw Jon.

“Agent Favreau,” Tommy said quietly.

The guard cleared his throat. “Do you want someone stationed inside, or are you good with the video monitoring?” He nodded toward the corner, where a small camera surveyed the room. "We get a feed up in front, but someone'll be here in under fifteen seconds if you need us."

Jon doubted that. This was a small rural jail, jurisdiction carefully selected by Tommy's lawyers in the change-of-venue request specifically because it was the farthest thing from max or high-tech.

He nodded anyway, avoiding Tommy's eyes. “Video’s fine,” he said.

The guard looked skeptical, but he was still a little in awe over Jon’s credentials, it seemed. He didn’t want to argue with the big shot from Quantico.

Jon watched  the guard double-check Tommy’s restraints before he left, jerking on the wrists cuffs secured to the D-ring on the table, bending to check the ones at his ankles attached to the hook on the floor. 

The whole time Tommy kept his eyes on Jon, unsmiling. Jon couldn’t stop watching him out of the corner of his eyes.

When the guard left them, Jon gave Tommy a wide berth as he sat down across from him at the table. 

He wished he had a notebook to take out and fiddle with, but the jail was following strict security protocol. Everyone was on edge with Tommy in the building.

Jon pulled his chair up, adjusted with the placement of the chair legs, shifted in his seat. He kept his right wrist carefully tucked in his lap as he fidgeted.

Finally, nothing else left to mess with, he raised his head and looked at Tommy.

“Do you want your lawyer here for this?” he asked warily. 

Tommy had good lawyers. Many of them. Jon knew he’d inherited a bunch of money after his parents died when he was a kid. Basic background. He also knew Tommy was easily financing a defense team with a deep bench that had nearly prevented him from being held without bail pretrial. A judge had barely been swayed by the DA’s office, last minute.

The lawyers had easily managed to keep him out of higher-level lockup, at least.

Tommy’s head tilted softly to the side. “No, I don’t want anyone else here.” His eyes slid down Jon’s face. Seemed to land on his throat for a beat. Then up to Jon’s eyes again, like he couldn’t decide where to look first. “You look good, Jon. It's really good to see you.” 

Jon couldn't say what it was to see Tommy, really. His breath was too shallow for it be good. He’d been dreading this meeting and had considered canceling a dozen times since scheduling it through Tommy’s defense attorney the week before. And yet, after the month he'd had, he was taken aback by the uneasy but undeniable comfort he felt being in the presence of a monster he was at least familiar with. One whose tricks he could identify by sight.

“Did you get my letters?” 

Jon pressed his lips together. Narrowed his eyes at Tommy, who looked on, unrepentant. A little mischievous. 

Yes, he’d gotten Tommy’s letters.

They had been routine at first. Jon often received letters from killers he’d helped put away. They ran the gamut from infuriated to melancholy to courteous to grateful, sometimes, depending on the subject. Every fifth subject or so, they became fixated on Jon or wanted him to visit them again. Make them feel special and unique, worthy of an FBI agent’s repeated attentions.

He wasn’t surprised to get a letter from Tommy. Or a second, or a third.

Tommy was funny. Jon had known that, that Tommy was quick-witted and droll with an arid sense of humor. It had come out in the voicemails he used to leave Jon, sometimes. Wryly recounting his day, slipping in little references to people he’d seen, things he’d done. Sometimes clear hints, other times just affable observations. 

His letters were funny, too. Polite, almost earnest. A little awkward. Charmingly so, to Jon's immortal shame.

Dutifully, at least in the beginning, he brought each letter into the office to be poured over by colleagues and potentially cataloged as evidence.

“He’s got the handwriting of a seventh grader,” Lovett said once, reading one of them over. He turned a page over and snorted. Jon figured he must have gotten to the part about two of Tommy’s cellmates getting into a fight that ended with them both unconscious on the floor, mutually equalized after punching each other in the heads at nearly the same time. Like that scene from Reservoir Dogs, Tommy had said, but dumber. “Fuck. He’s kind of funny. Like, creepy. But still funny.” 

Jon had hummed, focused on his paperwork. He’d read that letter three times that morning before he’d left for work, so he had the best parts memorized already.

As the letters kept coming, he read them more. Got a little obsessive about it. Especially as their tone shifted, from easy to teasing, before becoming warming, turning into—well, into something different. Something Jon didn't like to quantify, that he _couldn't_ , but that made him furtively read each one a fourth time, and a fifth.

Now, in the tiny room in a jail in the middle of nowhere, he refused to rise to the bait. He only had a short window. It was already stupid to be here without the permission of his sergeant or accompanied by another agent. He doubted Tommy’s lawyers would hesitate to bring it up at his next pretrial hearing, anything to gain their client leverage.

“Vietor,” he said. His voice was gravelly from the strain. He inhaled through his nose, held it for a minute, let it go. Looked Tommy in the face. “Tommy.”

Tommy’s lips peeled away from his teeth, an approximation of a smile as performed by someone who had never gained the muscle memory to accomplish the movement reflexively. “Yes, Jon?”

It felt impossible to even think of saying the words, but the dull throb in his wrist brought him back to why he was here.

“I need your help.”

The effect was immediate. Whatever indulgent half-smile Tommy had been experimenting with slipped away in an instant. He sat up straight, pale eyebrows shooting up, everything uncharacteristically demonstrative.

“Yeah?” Tommy said. He looked poised, like a dog ready to leap into a lake after a downed fowl.

Trying to gather his thoughts, Jon shifted restlessly in his seat, distracted enough that he let his arm knock clumsily into the side of the table. He winced at the loud thud it made, and the pain that went jolting up the nerves in his wrist.

Tommy’s eyes darted to his arm. Jon fumbled for the cuff of his coat, trying to yank it down, but he could already tell it was too late. The white plaster was clearly peeking out around his knuckles, obvious when you were focused on it.

“What’s that?” Tommy jerked his chin at the cast on Jon’s arm.

“It’s a fucking cast, what do you think it is?” Jon asked wearily.

Tommy’s shoulders went stiff. “How did you get the cast?”

Uninvited, Jon’s mind dredged up the memory of that night two weeks ago, like had done every hour or so since like a demented clock.

He remembered coming home late, and noticing Leo wasn’t barking as he unlocked the front door. It was unusual enough that he’d paused, head cocked.

But then he went inside. Even in his nightmares recreating it, he always went inside.

“Jon,” Tommy said slowly, enunciating. “How did you get the cast?”

Abruptly, Jon was angry. “I guess you’re not the only sociopath who’s obsessed with me,” he spat, feeling mean. Wanting to hurt, even though he didn’t like to normally.

With some sort of perverse satisfaction, he watched Tommy’s jaw twitch. He felt his own cheeks threatening to flush and ruthlessly fought back the impulse. He held Tommy’s gaze, exasperated. Afraid, but not of Tommy, somehow. 

“Tell me,” Tommy urged gently. “Please.”

That was all it took, apparently. The entirety of Tommy's cold-eyed attention and one measly 'please.' Man, Jon was cheap.

“I got another letter.” He chuckled tiredly. “I almost thought it was you, actually. Playing with my head, figuring out new and exciting ways to torture me from afar.” 

“Jon,” Tommy said, chiding.

Jon ignored him. “But that didn’t make any sense, since you’re in here, and whoever’s doing this—they’re definitely out there on their own recognizance. They're not safe behind bars.”

“What kind of note did they leave?” Tommy asked.

His mouth curved down at the memory. “A horrible one. Really gruesome, like a warning.” He bit his lip. “That’s how I knew it wasn’t yours, yours were never like that.” 

That felt like too much to admit. Way too much. He was just so tired. He felt like he could see the individual atoms vibrating in the air around him. His eyes were burning, dry and heavy.

He looked sideways at Tommy. 

Tommy’s eyes had gone flatter, if that was even possible. He had this look on his face like he’d never been afraid of anything, like how sharks must feel. Jon had used to think he was pretty brave, but even at his most foolhardy, he'd never been completely without fear. Tommy looked like he'd never known fear once, in his entire life. 

“He killed my dog.” Jon's nose burned. He couldn't stop seeing it in his mind's eye. Poor Leo. He pushed it away. It was too much. He rubbed both hands over his face. “Or she did, maybe, it could have been a woman who did it. Technically. Just because it’s statistically unlikely doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” 

He thought it was a man though. He remembered how they sounded when they breathed, heavy, every audible inhale. 

“They were in my apartment, and when I bent down to check on Leo—” He cut himself off, choked. He swallowed, fought through it. “When I checked on him, I got hit over the head. I woke up tied to a chair, and well—I won’t bore you with the details, but.” He felt woozy describing it, the first time he'd walked through the details since he'd repeated it over and over to the local PD, and then to Pfieffer at headquarters, and then he'd had to stop telling it. It was too much.

He held up his cast tiredly. Always so tired anymore. “It just...It got a little ugly." He smiled, wan.

“He tied you to a chair,” Tommy repeated evenly.

Jon nodded. “Yeah.” 

“Were you blindfolded when you came to?” 

Jon frowned. None of the police who had eventually responded had guessed that. He’d had to volunteer the information. “Yes,” he said cautiously. 

“Were you naked?” Tommy asked, awfully intent. 

Against his will, Jon felt the back of his neck get hot. “Yeah. I was. It wasn’t—he didn’t assault me. Like that.” There’d be nothing to be ashamed of if he had, Jon know, he told himself stubbornly, he'd spent an entire career knowing that, but it still felt oily in his mouth to talk about.

He watched in more than a little horror as a flicker of recognition swept across Tommy’s face, tiny, barely visible, a small wave across a cool still lake. 

“You know who it was,” Jon said, in wonder. He’d never really—it had felt like an excuse, in the end, that Tommy might have some insight, or be able to drag Jon out of the dead end he and the rest of his team had landed on, unable to track down any leads on who would be targeting Jon, again. No fresh crimes to connect it to. A prime suspect like Tommy Vietor already in jail.

But here was Tommy, and he seemed to know—Jon couldn’t believe it. 

Tommy’s voice was low, each word clipped “Jon, listen to me.”

“Tell me who it is.” 

“No, listen to me.” 

“Tell me, Tommy.”

“I can’t—just, let me take—”

“Fucking tell me who it is!” Jon was shouting now, hands in fists, even though it made his right wrist ache, the cracked bone achy and raw.

“You have to listen to me,” Tommy said, quiet in the face of Jon’s outburst. “I can protect you, I promise. Just let me.”

Jon laughed, wheezily, and shook his head. Looked down at the table, traced the grain of the formica on the rickety table with his eyes. “How can you do that, Tommy,” he mumbled. Instantly drained. “You’re locked up in here, and we have no idea who was in my apartment that night, there are no leads, and it can just happen again. Anytime! There's nothing I can—I don't know how."

Fuck, he was falling apart.

He moved to stand up. He had no idea what he was doing here, really. Commiserating with a murderer who used to terrorize him, about how some other likely-murderer was currently terrorizing him? It was like calling up a cheating ex to complain about his current partner’s unfaithfulness. It made no sense. He was so desperate.

“This was a mistake,” he said. He turned his head to motion at the video camera in the corner, ready to be let out of the room.

Abruptly, Tommy lurched forward toward Jon, coming up tight against his restraints. Startled, Jon sat back down in his chair, wide-eyed. He’d forgotten how fast Tommy could move. 

“You can’t stay at your apartment tonight,” Tommy told him.

“Oh?” Jon hissed out, reflexively pissy. “You’re in charge of where I sleep now?” 

“No, just—stay with a friend tonight. That short annoying one from work, stay with him.”

“Lovett?”

Tommy nodded. “He’s in love with you, he’ll let you stay as long as you need. He’s been panting after you for years, you know all he wants is for you to look his way,” he said quickly, calculating, thoughts tripping along.

Jon colored listening to him. He’d—he’d thought the same thing, once or twice, almost coldly, as he'd watched Lovett performing so desperately for just the tiniest bit of Jon's attention. It made him feel powerful, for just a moment, until he felt unspeakably cruel for thinking it and put it from his mind.

“Lovett’s apartment isn’t any more secure than mine, or any less," Jon said, getting worked up. "We’re both FBI agents, we can protect ourselves. I can protect myself, shit." He felt weak and annoyed at he’d allowed himself to believe Tommy might have some kind of special, monster-specific intel that would somehow help Jon slip through the

He carried a firearm, for god's sake, he was trained in combat and self-defense. How had he managed to let some unsub get the jump on him, in his own house? And here he was, looking to Tommy for some sort of sick guidance. He was so annoyed at himself, for letting himself believe Tommy might have some kind of special, monster-specific intel that would keep the invisible noose around Jon's neck from tightening, stop this new hell from getting worse.

Tommy looked momentarily shifty-eyed. Then, expression going blank again, he said, “Your back door. That’s how he’s getting in.”

“I have a deadbolt,” Jon pointed out.

“But the hinges on the side are rusted,” Tommy blurted out. “They come right off. Door swings the other way, then.” 

Jon jerked back, stunned, and then rolled his eyes at himself, even as he felt shaky at this new information. He’d known that Tommy knew where he lived, so why was it a surprise that he’d also cased the place effectively enough to know about the faulty mechanisms of his back door? Tommy was a predator. That’s what they did, they sniffed out the weaknesses of their prey.

Whoever was stalking him had figured it out, too. 

For a single, degrading moment, he allowed himself to think of Tommy walking silently up the steps to Jon’s back porch, standing at the door, long fingers running lightly over the doorknob, keen gaze spotting the weakness, knowing immediately how to disable it but choosing not to. Letting Jon sleep on instead, uninterrupted. Scaring away Jon's assailant, keeping all the other creatures of the night away so long as Tommy stood watch. 

A shiver ran up Jon's spine.

"Just go home with him after work," Tommy was saying, "don't even stop at your apartment." 

“I’m on leave,” Jon admitted. “After what happened with you, and then the other night—the department insisted. Said I needed time to ‘recuperate.’”

Whatever the hell that meant. However the fuck you recuperated when you couldn’t fall asleep for more than minutes at a time. When you kept having nightmares about certain unspeakable things, sometimes bloody and horrific, other times hot and feverish and just as horrible, in their own way. Just as unthinkable, until they stopped seeming like nightmares at all. 

Tommy studied him for a long moment. He blinked slowly, always a disquieting maneuver on his face. It put Jon in mind of an alligator submerged with only its eyes above water. 

Then, without truly changing expressions, he seemed to settle. 

“I'm handling it,” he told Jon. "Don’t worry about it."

Jon frowned, flabbergasted. “ _That’s_ your advice? I come to you for help after waking up tied to a fucking chair with some maniac breathing down my neck and breaking my arm and you tell me not to fucking worry about it?” He was breathing hard, nearly gasping. He didn’t mean to tell Tommy all that. He didn’t mean to just lay it all out. “You're in fucking jail! You're handcuffed to a goddamn table, how the hell are you going to handle anything?! Are you fucking _serious_?”

He wiped at his eyes gone suddenly damp, furious at himself, and at Tommy. “If you know who it is, just tell me, and I can have the department organize an investigation. That’s what I came here for. That’s what I want from you, Tommy. Why can’t you even do that much?”

Tommy didn’t fight with him. He watched Jon scrub wrathfully at his face. Gradually get a hold of himself. Slump back against the chair, adrift and melancholy. Tommy watched him calmly the whole time, unperturbed their surroundings or the guards no doubt listening from the video room or the threat of time ending their visit.

Finally, when Jon had calmed, Tommy put his hands flat on the table again. He tapped his pointer fingers.

“So,” he said slowly. He gave Jon a knowing look, transparent in his efforts to distract Jon. “If you got my letters, why didn’t you write me back?”

Jon took the bait, barking out a surprised laugh. Of all the things to fixate on, after what Jon had just told him. “Because it would be wildly inappropriate? Because you’re a fucking monster?”

He’d seen the crime scene photos. He’d been there when they’d uncovered the bones in the back of Tommy’s childhood home. The first break in the case, all those years ago. He knew what Tommy was capable of better than anyone. 

What he didn’t add was that he’d stopped turning the letter in as evidence over two months ago. That he’d kept them, a neat pile in a box behind his bed like a furtive stash of porn. Read them over and over. Told Lovett and Pfieffer that Tommy had stopped sending them, partially so they’d stop looking so increasingly worried about.

Mostly because he just...didn’t want to give them away, anymore. 

“That’s okay,” Tommy said easily. "Hope they weren't too dirty for you." He blinked quickly, which on Tommy was practically a wink.

Jon couldn't think of the contents of those later, secret letters without his stomach turning into knots. He couldn't think of them at all, but especially not now, with Tommy in front of him. Effortlessly reading every thought written across Jon's face, no doubt.

Behind Tommy, the door opened. Startled, Jon jerked to his feet.

“You good?” the guard asked, glancing at Tommy, then at Jon, uncertain. “I gave you an extra five minutes, but my superior’s gonna have my ass if I push it any further.”

Jon edged his way around the table, trying not to seem too manic, barely managing it. “It’s fine. That’s fine. I appreciate it.” He didn’t look down at Tommy as he passed by.

He was at the door when Tommy called out, “Agent Favreau?” 

Jon turned his chin just the smallest amount to look at him. He raised his eyebrows impatiently. 

“Try to get some sleep, okay? Promise me.” 

Jon rolled his eyes, trying to cover how shaky he felt. “Yeah, whatever.” 

“And stay with that needy co-worker of yours.”

The guard was listening avidly, eyes wide as he watched them go back and forth. Jon found it really hard to care about the audience, somehow. What was he going to do, report Jon to his supervisor? Get Jon put on indefinite administrative leave? Make his team members look at him like he was going to crack and have a nervous breakdown at any second?

Jon had already been making a mental note to call Lovett as soon as he walked out, but he shrugged. “We’ll see.” 

"Good." Tommy didn’t smile, but his eyes went ever so slightly warmer. “I told you. Don’t worry so much, okay? You’re always worrying.”

Jon turned and left without looking behind him. He kept his face carefully blank until he was outside, and as he got in his car, and as he drove away. He refused to let acknowledge the way his lower back felt looser.

He didn't think about Tommy.

That night, as he was settling in to fall asleep on Lovett’s couch, his phone rang. It was Pfieffer calling, he saw. Pfieffer hadn’t called him since putting Jon on leave. Pfieffer calling was never a good sign.

Sure enough—“Favreau, I wish was calling you with better news.” 

Jon’s heart automatically started hammering in his chest. He sat up on the couch, staring wildly into the darkness. “What? What happened?” He thought of colleagues getting gunned down in the field, a new victim being found, christ—kids, maybe. 

“It’s Vietor. He’s out.”

He squinted, disoriented. “Out?” That didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t even been sentenced yet, and he was being held without bail. How could he be released? “What judge approved that.”

Pfieffer chuckled humorlessly. “No judge, Favs. He escaped.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for brief description of an animal death. rip fictional Leo :(
> 
>  
> 
> don't look at me.
> 
> man oh man. I think there might be one last chapter left in me for this doozy. LIFE IS WILD, YOU GUYS. SO WILD.


	3. Chapter 3

*

 

Three weeks after Tommy escaped from jail, the first body part arrived on Jon’s doorstep.

His back doorstep, really, tucked mischievously halfway under the mat. Trussed up in brown paper like a fine cut of meat from the butcher, fuzzy twine wrapped twice around it, almost old-timey in appearance.

He stood for a while looking down at it. Sighed. He peered around the shaded area in the back parking lot, and beyond into the overgrown patch of oak and maple trees that was slowly taking over the empty lock.

It was the middle of the day and nearly everyone was at work. He was alone, at least in his apartment complex, but also possibly in the world.

After an endless staring contest with the thing, he finally knelt and picked up the package, foolishly, he knew. He shouldn’t touch it. Shouldn’t disturb the evidence, if that's what it was. Before someone from the office could figure out the significance. 

Even without a letter accompanying it, he knew it was from Tommy. 

It felt a little like he was being scolded.  _I told you not to come back to your apartment, Jon._ He could almost see Tommy shaking his head, exasperated at him. He might even be out there now, watching from a distance. Pleased Jon was picking up his gift but annoyed that Jon had disobeyed Tommy's safety precautions to be able to do so in the first place.

Jon wanted to roll his eyes and argue back, that he hadn’t, not really. That he’d been faithfully bunking with Lovett for weeks. He’d just slipped in to grab some clothes, check for mail. Ended up sitting nearly catatonic on the couch for thirty minutes, staring into his bedroom where the assault had happened.

He’d only been there for an hour, maybe, when the package was delivered.

He took it inside the apartment now, still jumpy standing outside by himself even though it had been two months since he’d been attacked in his apartment. That assailant had gone dark. It was an unmitigated reprieve. And he hadn’t heard anything from Tommy, not since he’d seen him in person right before he made a break for it, although his feelings there were murkier, and more difficult to fully discern.

The package was pretty light. He sawed through the twine with a butter knife from the sink and peeled the crinkly brown paper away. He saw a fingernail first, then the entire digit, and with the way the paper was rolled he ended up pulling wrong and sending the whole hand rolled triumphantly out of the paper and onto the table, making two more revolutions before coming to a stop.

It was a man’s hand, probably. Hairy knuckles, those deep-bitten nail beds he associated with a certain type of white guy. Smaller than Jon’s, he noted. 

He tried to think of the hand holding a baseball bat, bringing it down on Jon’s arm, cracking bone. It was possible. And it must be the same hand—he trusted Tommy not to make a mistake like that.

Jon gripped the edge of the table, staring at the hand, wrist hewn neatly to the bone, no mess. His own nearly-healed wrist gave a ghost throb of recognition from where it rested at his side, sling by his shoes at the front door. He hated wearing it. 

Deep in his gut, he felt a bloodthirsty satisfaction rise from knowing the person who had been in his apartment that night had suffered. That Tommy had made him suffer. Clinically, he wondered if the owner of the hand was still alive, and was torn over which he preferred—a summary execution, or Tommy keeping him hidden somewhere with cold efficiency, until he came to lop off the other hand, or something else.

Because Jon knew, instantly, that this offering was not the last. He thought of what he knew of sociopaths for a moment, other cases where suspects sent gifts to victims. Tried to remain clinical as he contemplated possible outcomes.

Then he pushed that aside and thought of what he knew of Tommy specifically. Recognized that the two groups—regular killers, and Tommy—were becoming separate in his head. There were other cases he’d worked, and then there was Tommy’s case.

The pain of his wrist knitting itself slowly back together and the headache he’d been carrying around for weeks showing how quickly the rest of him was falling apart and the fierce sweep of  _relief_  all making him a little numb to the moral implications.

He pulled out his cell phone and hit a few buttons. He was smiling, he realized. As the phone rang he worked to smooth it off his face before the call connected. He didn’t want it to come through in his voice. People would expect him to sound a certain way, calling this in. Frustrated, or at the very least uneasy. 

Even though he felt neither of those things. Even though this was the safest he’d felt in months, even with a dead hand lying in front of him on his kitchen table.

“I got a package in the mail,” he said when the call connected. He felt the corner of his mouth tugging again as he looked down at the package. He bit his lip, fighting it back. Not yet.

Pfieffer was suitably aghast on the phone. “Jesus, Favreau. Jesus  _christ_.”

Following protocol, Jon used a clean dishtowel to wrap the hand back up in its brown paper and drove into the office, cradling it in his lap. He didn’t really think about how that might be weird until he was parking in his usual space, paper-wrapped hand looking cheerily up at him. 

He carried it gingerly inside, smiling tightly at former co-workers as he passed.

It had been weeks since he’d come in for regular duty. Sometimes it felt like he’d never be cleared for the field again; other times it felt more surreal like he’d never been an agent in the first place. Like he’d dreamed it. Like he’d always been this person, gaunt and sunken-eyed and unshaven and empty of a purpose. Painfully adrift. 

“You shouldn’t have touched it,” Pfieffer scolded as he examined the package, carefully unwrapping it with tweezers, hands in latex gloves, Jon sprawled in the chair across from him. 

He raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t really thinking,” he lied. “I hadn’t been back in a few weeks, so I figured maybe it was just regular mail.” 

Pfieffer gave him a look. “Even the mail you were getting from before wasn’t great. First Vietor. Then that other admirer of yours.”

Jon felt his face shutter. “Don’t.”

“I’m just saying.” Pfieffer sat back, crossing his arms. Looked at Jon like, my god, I used to know this person, where’d he go? “We were already on high alert with Vietor writing you love letters. And then this second guy? Ever think they were related?” 

Unbidden, a tide of irrepressible anger burbled up his chest. “No,” he said sharply, too sharply—tellingly. “I never thought that.”

In the weeks before his attack, he remembered the reaction of staff to the second set of letters; the non-Tommy letters.

He brought in the first two as they arrived. After he’d started stockpiling Tommy’s; before that unspeakable night in his apartment, before the mind behind the second letter came crashing into his apartment, cracking open his life like an egg.

“‘I want to peel you open and see what your insides look like, but not right away,’” Lovett had read aloud, grimacing. “‘I can come for you whenever I want.’ Shit, Jon. That is  _visceral_. Vietor’s getting creative these days.” 

“It’s not from him,” Jon said. "It's someone else."

Lovett gave him a weird look. “How do you know that?”

“Handwriting, syntax, phrasing, general markers.” He ticked them off on his fingers as he went, even though they were really secondary to him. He just knew. Tommy would never speak to him like that, or put it on paper. 

Tommy Vietor had murdered a minimum of thirty-five people over the past eight years, the youngest victim nineteen and the oldest fifty-seven, but one thing he had always prided himself on in his calls and messages to Jon was that he was never rude about it. 

Jon had no idea why he would cling to that assurance. He must be losing his mind. Or his touch, or his edge. Whatever made him a good agent, before.

Watching him, Lovett had fallen silent like he always did when talk veered too closely to Tommy. He never said anything outright, but of all Jon’s co-workers and friends and family, Lovett was the only person who truly sensed that something untoward was unfolding between Jon and Tommy. 

But he didn't have the guts to accuse him of anything, Jon thought cattily, and so he just stared Lovett down, quietly defiant.  _If you're not going to say it_ , he thought,  _I'm not going to, either_.

Now, in the office, a disembodied hand reclining casually on the desk between them, Jon watched his former boss lean back and study him, puzzling out loud.

“What I don’t understand is why he sat in jail for four months instead of breaking out right away.” It took Jon a moment to realize Pfieffer was talking about Tommy, not the owner of the hand, and he sat up, alert. “Looks like their transport procedure at that godforsaken pile always had that personnel hole. Vietor must’ve spotted it at the very beginning.” Pfeiffer squinted into the middle distance, mystified. “Why’d he put it off?” 

Jon shrugged. “Who knows how his mind works,” he said, even though he suspected he knew why. That he was waiting for some sort of sign from Jon. Some reason to do it.

Which Jon had given him, unknowingly at first. Terribly, shamefully grateful for doing so, after.

After he left Pfieffer, and the office, and his old life, really, as he was driving back to Lovett's—he decided to move back to his apartment. It felt safe to do it, now. A perfect excuse.

“You don’t have to,” Lovett insisted, watching Jon pack his things into a duffle and set it by the door. Lovett rubbed at the back of his neck, jittery. “It’s. Don’t feel like you have to rush off. It’s fine.”

Jon straightened. A few months ago, he’d been looking speculatively at Lovett. Wondering if that kind of neediness might not be attractive after a while. That vulnerability. Always seeking Jon’s approval, his attention.

He looked at Lovett now, and he thought of Tommy and the cold, even gleam of his eye. Like he wanted to eat Tommy up. Not like he needed to, but like he was choosing to. Hunting it, chasing it to ground, pulling Jon down until he was immobile on the ground, tangled up in Tommy's long limbs, struggle gone entirely out of him.

He put his duffle on one shoulder and smiled, trying to make it seem normal. “Lovett, you’ve been so great through all of this.” He put a hand on Lovett’s shoulder, squeezing. He saw the way Lovett canted into his touch. “But I need to go home. I can’t rework my whole life around being afraid.”

He couldn’t tell him that he wanted to be home when the next hand appeared. Or a foot, or a leg, or maybe an organ. He had no idea how Tommy was dividing it all up.

Most importantly, he wanted to be there when Tommy finally showed up. Inevitably. He knew it was going to happen. It had to.

Except Tommy didn’t show up. 

He didn't call Jon, or write him, or make his presence known aside from leaving Jon scraps of the man that had hurt him. The bureau had assigned two plainclothes officers to watch his apartment twenty-four seven, but Tommy managed to just keep sending body parts regardless. Which 

The body parts kept coming, though. In his mailbox, on his back doorstep, under the doormat. He didn’t know how Tommy was doing it. It was—at first, it was—indescribable. Like being paid tribute. Bloody and horrifying, the way a god would demand sacrifice. Like Jon was the god, or Tommy was, raining his awful praise on Jon the only way he knew how. In a horrifying way that quickly grew mundane and made Jon feel—almost smug. Knowing what Tommy would do. What Jon could ask him to do. The power of it.

It was so fucked up, he had no words. The warmth in his chest each time he received another grisly brown-papered gift.

It eventually grew frustrating, however.

He was keeping track like you would with a gang of hangman. How many parts to make a body. The lab at work slowly assembling a whole person, one that wasn't in their database, but who Jon knew, all the same, had once stood in his bedroom, watching Jon panic, blind, then smashing his arm and leaving him with an unspoken promise to return. 

It took three weeks, but he was relatively certain when the final package came. The last body part.

He squatted down at his back door to take it in. It was probably a foot this time. It had that kind of heft to it.

“I got another one,” He said to Pfieffer on the phone. “I think—I think this might be it. The last one.”

“Oh, do you,” Pfieffer said flatly. “Do you, now.” 

He didn’t ask Jon, if this was, in fact, the end of one more horrifying era of Jon's career, if he, in turn, felt ready to be assessed and to come back to work. Jon bit his bottom lip and didn’t ask to come back, either. He knew what they both weren't saying; he was a liability, now. Even if Pfieffer would never truly know the extent of it. 

Instead, they sat quietly on the line waiting each other out, until Jon exhaled.

“I think you can call off the detail, now,” he said.

“Oh, so one unsub is gone, you think you’re safe now? No risk left out there for Jonathan Favreau?”

Jon sighed, irritated. “Vietor isn’t an unsub. We know who he is.”

Pfieffer looked unimpressed, and their impromptu phone meeting broke up soon after that.

They sent a car to pick up the foot, and Jon sat alone in his apartment, quietly staring at the wall. It was so quiet without Leo padding around, it still caught him off guard. He even missed the casual untidy loudness of Lovett’s.

Idly, Jon found himself thinking about the first case he ever worked. He remembered that first one so vividly, every sense memory vibrant and distinct.

There were dozens of cases that came after, and sometimes it bothered him how quickly they blended into one another. Different murders, different suspects, different victims, but all relatively predictable. 

That first one, though. He still had dreams about it roughly once a week, more than ten years later.

He remembered the unsub’s house smelled like mud when he’d stepped inside. The screen door banged loud as a gunshot against the doorframe from the back of the house, making him jerk and flush under the amused gaze of his erstwhile mentor at the time. How his work shoes kept pinching his feet and the throbbing of his toes underlaid everything else, distracting him as he desperately tried to concentrate, every detail feeling so heavy with meaning. Maybe that would be the clue that solved it all. Or this would. Or that. Jon coming to save the day.

He remembered how exciting it was, being there, the humming under his skin, how ashamed he’d felt to be so excited to be a part of it all, even knowing they were pursuing a man who had killed his wife and daughters and the elderly couple next door before fleeing out of state. The brutal truth of it all.

It felt like a million earth years had elapsed since that first case. 

He didn’t think he’d ever be able to feel that excitement again. He had to accept that he might never be cleared for duty. That he might not want to be. That he wasn't that person, now.

Gradually, he realized all he really wanted was to go far away, where he didn’t know himself anymore. 

Florida felt like it might be able to offer that for him.

And if Florida was also isolated and removed enough that he didn’t feel the constant eyes of the bureau on him, and felt like a place someone would easily found, well.

So he was in south Florida now.

“Are you punishing yourself or something?” Lovett had asked, always too perceptive, when Jon came to say goodbye. “Do you think because Vietor got out and you couldn’t find him again and some other psychopath victimized you for a while that you’re somehow deserving of  _Florida_?”

Not quite, Jon didn’t say.  _I want to get the fuck away from everything so my choices don’t matter anymore. I’m so angry at everyone that I don’t feel like the same person anymore, and I don’t think I ever will again_.

Instead, he hugged Lovett, and got in his car, and left. Thought how easy it was to leave when you got right down to it. 

His parents were worried, but no one was throwing themselves on the pavement to stop his car from driving away, either. Tommy sure as hell didn’t appear. Nothing was stopping him from just...going.

For all the talk of Florida being a cesspool, Jon found it was really only about sixty percent true, which wasn't too bad a margin, all things considered.

The whole state was humid like the inside of a bathroom after a shower. Most of the people in the dirty town he’d chosen at random seemed strung out most of the time, which he found relatable. His neighbors in the janky apartment complex were curious about him, he could tell, some northerner plopped down amongst them like an alien landing, but they were mostly hazy in his peripheral vision. Too weary to pick too actively at the scabs of Jon’s life. He really appreciated that about them.

He’d only been down south for three months before Tommy found him. 

It was storming out, air soupy with moisture. He was staring at the TV on the couch in his undershirt, drinking his third beer of the night. Feeling real weird about the way his life had turned out. Not hating it as much as he should.

There wasn’t even a knock at the door. He just felt it. Like air pressure dropping. His spine went straight. He sat up, vigilant. He turned off the TV and set down the beer and crept to the door, slowly.

Thunder crashed, no rain audible hitting the pavement outside just yet, instead likely still gathering in the clouds in the distance. 

He stood at his plasterboard front door, hand on the knob. Squeezed it tight. Twisted it and threw it open in one motion before he could lose his nerve. 

Tommy stared at him from the end of the short walkway leading from Jon’s doorway to the sidewalk. Like he'd always been there.

Jon's mouth fell open, just slightly. Gaping at Tommy. His eyes darted hungrily all over Tommy from afar, from the top of Tommy’s head, hair grown longer, curling at his chin, then down his bland white t-shirt, his dorky khaki shorts. Thin and gangly and pale save for a sunburn across his nose.

Tommy stared back. Face arrested.

Jon gripped hard onto the door frame. His mind was buzzing.

After only a few seconds, Tommy started up the walk, not hurrying but without a hint of leisure in his steps. Eyes two dark voids that never left Jon’s face. Taking the steps two at a time, coming to a sudden stop just in front of Jon, so the toes of theirs shoes brushed together.

“Tommy,” Jon said hoarsely. He didn't know what he was fucking feeling. He couldn't believe this was happening. Everything had flipped, the terrible truths he knew about Tommy sifting to the bottom of the universe like sand. Everything else floating to the top. Heavy and dank, thoughts that shouldn't ever have seen the light of day. Now dominating every corner of Jon's mind.

In a flash, Tommy’s hand shot out to cup the side of Jon’s face. Reflexively, Jon flinched back, just his head, his feet firmly planted. Not trying to get away. Just surprised by the movement. How strong Tommy's grip was.

He could feel his pulse thudding hard on the side of his neck, so hard it must be visible. He wondered if Tommy could see it, close up as he was. 

Feebly, a part of Jon was telling him to recoil. He didn’t. He stayed still.

Eyes running over every inch of Jon’s face, Tommy pressed his thumb at the corner of his mouth like it was a hinge. Insistent. 

Again, Jon knew he should turn his head away. Tommy’s other hand was resting on his chest, just at the base of his throat, but he wasn’t holding him down. Jon could get away if he wanted to.

He felt his mouth part a scant half-inch. Just enough.

Tommy’s thumb slipped into Jon’s mouth. Jon felt his eyes go wide, staring, bewildered. Tommy’s face was so close. Inside his mouth, Jon felt Tommy press down on Jon’s tongue. He made a sound, some sort of cut-off groan.

Two sharp identical points of color appeared high on Tommy’s cheeks. 

Tommy's other hand came up to brace against Jon’s jaw, holding him steady. Jon felt like he could go completely slack and Tommy would hold him up. He swayed inward.

He was so fucking exhausted. He’d forgotten, moving down here, but it never really dissipated. Just went dormant. Until now. Pushing down any urge to fight. If it had ever truly existed. 

"Look at you," Tommy said. His voice was so even. Unsurprised, like he always knew he'd find Jon, sooner rather than later.

Jon swallowed around Tommy's thumb. He knew Tommy just wanted to be in control, and Jon had just become the fulcrum of that desire. Jon wasn’t stupid. He knew that. 

It didn’t mean he didn’t want the exact same thing. 

“It’s good to see you again,” Tommy said thoughtfully. Almost disinterested, although Jon felt the way his hand drifted down to his chest again, flexed around Jon’s throat when he sucked in a breath. His eyes moved from Jon’s eyes to his mouth to his hand resting on Jon’s throat up to Jon's eyes again in an endless circuit. “I missed you.”

Jon’s ears were ringing. He felt like he was watching everything from the ceiling, staring down at himself, but at the same time, he felt more deeply rooted in his body than he ever remembered being before. 

Tommy’s thumb slipped out of his mouth. He stepped closer, their chests brushing together. Forehead nearly pressed to Jon’s temple. Radiating heat, making Jon flush. Sweat dripping down his forehead and the side of his head in the fucking Florida heat.

“Me, too,” Jon whispered. Voice harsh despite the volume. Honest. His good wrist came up, hand gripping hard onto Tommy’s forearm. Seizing on so he wouldn’t stumble over. “I did.”

Tommy’s hand tightened slightly at his throat, held the pressure. Relaxed. Jon’s breath caught.

“Good,” Tommy said. He pulled back to study Jon’s face. His eyes were half-lidded, but still totally absorbed. “Good, Jon.”

They stood there, and stood there, the night bugs screaming around them, the humid air swallowing them both up, together, whole. 

 

*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT A WHIRLWIND, YOU GUYS. WOW. 
> 
> I'd like to thank everyone in this bar for their love and support of this weird-ass fic.
> 
> join me in the void [on tumblr](https://ohjafeeljadefinitelyfeel.tumblr.com/).

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on [on tumblr](https://ohjafeeljadefinitelyfeel.tumblr.com/) as I slowly break the seal on every ridiculous fanfic trope there is for this fandom.


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